::: From what I know, a moderator user group is possible, but not the spam fighter one. Then again, too many hierarchical levels may be too much for such a small body of regulars. Implementing the moderator group is easy, [[mw:Manual:User rights]] has the details (the "ninja" example and the list of permissions should be enough for putting together the configuration commands to be added to the wiki's LocalSettings.php.

+

::: From what I know, a moderator user group is possible, but not the spam fighter one. Then again, too many hierarchical levels may be too much for such a small body of regulars. Implementing the moderator group is easy, [[mw:Manual:User rights]] has the details (the "ninja" example and the "list of permissions" section should be enough for putting together the configuration commands to be added to the wiki's LocalSettings.php).

−

::: As for bureaucrats, I think it makes sense but it seems to me that only Jeff takes longer to perform changes that affect the server, as they understandably may take longer or be more complex (or break the wiki!). Bureaucrats' only difference from admins is that they can promote/demote other users, and this Jeff has been doing without delay, so perhaps there isn't a need for more bureaucrats at the moment. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

+

::: As for bureaucrats, I think it makes sense but it seems to me that Jeff only takes longer to perform changes that affect the server, as they understandably may take longer or be more complex (or break the wiki!). Bureaucrats' only difference from admins is that they can promote/demote other users, and this Jeff has been doing without delay, so perhaps there isn't a need for more bureaucrats at the moment. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

::: We do need more sysadmins (people with access to the server), though, for sure. This is a little tricky as none of us is comfortable enough to confidently make server changes in a mediawiki install. Jeff, how about putting the wiki in source control and giving two or three people access to it, so that any wrongdoings can be easily reverted? You could setup a git repository in the server and we could fork it locally to our machines, make tests and push the commits to the server repo whenever they're ready. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 17:20, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

::: We do need more sysadmins (people with access to the server), though, for sure. This is a little tricky as none of us is comfortable enough to confidently make server changes in a mediawiki install. Jeff, how about putting the wiki in source control and giving two or three people access to it, so that any wrongdoings can be easily reverted? You could setup a git repository in the server and we could fork it locally to our machines, make tests and push the commits to the server repo whenever they're ready. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 17:20, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Revision as of 17:23, 5 December 2012

Welcome to the Community Portal. This set of pages is used to discuss how Explain xkcd works, and is divided into five sections. Please use the table below to find the most appropriate section to post in, or post in the miscellaneous section. You can view all community portal sections at once here.

Changelog

I've changed MediaWiki:Helppage to point here. If we decide to have a local users manual or help desk, it should probably be changed. The default target was "Help:Contents". This also changes where the "Help" link in the sidebar points, so right now we have two different sidebar links pointing to the same place. --PhilosopherLet us reason together. 10:30, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Update: I changed it to point to Help:Contents at mediawiki.org. The community portal is already linked from the sidebar, it was redundant to have two links there pointing to the same page. --Waldir (talk) 11:41, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Comments

Hey,

You might consider Extension:Comments. It acts basically like the comment system on the blog, so you could keep everything (article, comments) in one place. It's more conducive to casual conversation than the discussion page.
--Cyanfish (talk) 14:07, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

That's nice, but a simpler approach could be just to transclude the talk page in the subject page itself, as is done in the Wikipedia Signpost (see here for an example). --Waldir (talk) 16:15, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Okay, that would work. The extension does have its advantages though - it's easier for new users (no markup), you can have upvotes/downvotes/"comments of the day"... It's a matter of preference, I suppose. --Cyanfish (talk) 22:27, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I'll take a look and see what looks best. I don't necessarily like the transcluding option. --Jeff (talk) 15:56, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Neither do I, to be honest. I just created {{Comic discussion}} to make things a little smoother, but from my experience, there will *always* be newcomers forgetting to sign, commenters confused about the best markup for indentation/replies, comments placed at the top rather than at the bottom, new comic description pages created without that template, etc. A proper commenting solution might be the best option for this. I just mentioned the transclusion option to let people know it was a possibility. Also, in the long run we need to make sure the wiki doesn't start looking like Wikia (blergh) if we start adding too many custom extensions. But a comment extension seems to be essential if we don't want to alienate the blog's community. --Waldir (talk) 17:06, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest we add comments capabilities to the comics pages, since the discussion pages don't lend themselves to the kind of dialogue experienced on the blog. There appear to be several extensions that allow this, but I'm fairly new to the wikimedia stuff so I'm not sure how it would work, exactly.

One extension available is Extension:WordPress Comments, which appears to enable the style of comments we are used to. Any thoughts? --DanB (talk) 15:10, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

We should definitely give it a try :) --Waldir (talk) 19:46, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

That said, its demo looks rather simple. Extension:Comments seems to be a little more powerful (supporting replies, user pictures, voting, and maybe more). The only advantage of the Wordpress one is that it would integrate with Wordpress so extra accounts don't need to be created, but I assume most people who used to comment on the blog didn't have accounts anyway... --Waldir (talk) 19:58, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Tried Extension:Comments - but the download page for it does not exist. Anyone have any ideas why that is? Looks like an extension I'd like to try, but I can't download it! --Jeff (talk) 01:47, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Robots.txt

I'm not sure how to set it up, but if you could edit the robots.txt file to exclude the contents of Category:Noindexed pages? I've created a Sandbox for people to test the unfamiliar features in, and you're probably not going to want that indexed by the search engines. --PhilosopherLet us reason together. 08:47, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Apparently you can edit it through MediaWiki:Robots.txt, but I'm not experienced enough to know what will happen if you block a url that runs through a .php page. (Perhaps nothing? Perhaps it blocks everything?) Is there any chance of moving the wiki to use /wiki/articlename urls like Wikipedia does rather than the current /wiki/index.php?title=articlename ? --PhilosopherLet us reason together. 10:43, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

/wiki/articlename would be great. Been trying to figure out how to make it work for days. Let me know if you know how. --Jeff (talk) 11:11, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

For the record, what was installed was the Gadgets extension (which makes sense since Philosopher said the InputBox is not needed ATM). I had already brought the HotCat gadget, which should now be visible in the users' preferences for enabling. It was also necessary to create MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition and the description for HotCat so it could appear in the preferences page. However, it doesn't seem to be working... If someone can figure out what's wrong, we can fix it. One can test the script separately from the gadget system (so we can make sure it's not a gadget problem) by installing it as a user script, as I did in User:Waldir/common.js --Waldir (talk) 11:02, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, the guys from the #mediawiki IRC channel helped me figure out what was wrong :) it should be working now and available to all users via the gadgets tab of the preferences page. --Waldir (talk) 11:41, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

You rule Waldir. The InputBox extension is enabled as well for good measure. --Jeff (talk) 13:01, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Awesome :D I assume Philosopher will have a few ideas for that (namely the {{Community portal}} template. --Waldir (talk) 16:28, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that's where I found out about it, at least. I may not find time to implement it right away - I'm busy in RL at the moment. In the mean time, I've imported Popups from en.wikipedia. I haven't edited out the references to Wikipedia in it b/c I'm not quite sure which of them will break things or what to replace them with. --PhilosopherLet us reason together. 04:23, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Wordpress Import

Anyone have any idea on how to import all of my posts from Wordpress into pages in the wiki? I can do it manually obviously, but I'd love to do it programatically. --Jeff (talk) 15:10, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I also realize that I won't be importing ALL the posts, just the ones that don't already have pages in the wiki already created. --Jeff (talk) 15:25, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

SlashMe said (here): When we agree on a page layout, I can do this automatically. He's speaking about importing and creating pages for all comics programmatically. I don't know if he includes the explanations from your blog posts, though...

Also, do you think it could be a good idea to import, in the comic discussions here, the comments existing in the wordpress blog for comics prior to the wiki conversion? They obviously wouldn't be associated with wiki accounts, but we could get a copy of them here (with the dates, names, and also the +/- comment appreciation maybe...). Perhaps this could be considered once the idea of wordpress comments on wiki pages (as suggested here by DanB) is already settled.

I don't think I can import blog posts completely automatically, but maybe write something to make it easier. I'll have to look what is possible, but I'd say the least I'll need is an account for Wordpress.

Importing comments is similar: No promises, but probably difficult if not impossible. I'll have to see the comment system in the wiki. --SlashMe (talk) 17:06, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Importing all previous blog comments would be awesome. We could try a test installation of wordpress and a few test pages here on the wiki (it's easy to delete them if we screw up anything). In any case, I expect some manual tweaking to be needed if we want to convert the comments already posted on-wiki into comments of the wordpress plugin. It's definitely a challenge, but after all, we're xkcd readers, by definition we enjoy a good puzzle :) (and many of us are perfectionists who won't settle for a less-than-perfect solution :D). I say let's hack the heck outta that extension! --Waldir (talk) 19:48, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to the perfectionists, but regarding a less-than-perfect solution, could we include a link to the blog comments as a temporary stopgap? I've been using 1004:_Batman to try my hand at adding a comic, and I added a subtle link to the blog comments below the discussion box/transmutation. I'm thinking that link could be added programatically because we know how the blog structure is with year/month/date foldering. --DanB (talk) 17:11, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it can be automatically generated by the {{comic}} template. User:TheHYPO should be able do do it. --Waldir (talk) 18:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Automation

This wiki lacks automation, every time a comic comes out it needs to be submitted manually. A really simple way to do this is utilize xkcd's own JSON feed.
http://xkcd.com/json.html
If you download the latest comic json feed and edit it in notepad, you find all sorts of useful data like a complete transcript of the comic. --Jtorba (talk) 14:28, 7 August 2012‎ (UTC)

Outage

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to
complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform
them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that
may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an
ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Very strange, and not able to repro it, so it seems to have been transient. Just noting it here in case it happens again. I assume this is a hosting company hiccup.

BTW, while researching the above, I noticed that the explainxkcd.com domain registration expires in 3 days (August 10)... hopefully the bill has been paid; I'd hate for this site to go down; Grace Period and Redemption are a PITA... -- IronyChef (talk) 14:44, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

over the past week, I've gotten a few of those Internal Server Errors at random. TheHYPO (talk) 15:05, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what is up with them, but I've gotten some as well. It is either me messing with the site or the server creaking under pressure. --Jeff (talk) 15:32, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Could be the pressure... I've been getting a few randomly and the site every now and then gets quite slow. --Waldir (talk) 18:43, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

References

Can we install the "references" plugin so that we can use "ref" tags and add "references" sections to certain comics? I grant that it won't be as useful as on wikipedia, as most references are generally just wikilinks to wikipedia anyway, but I think it could be helpful. In editing the Black Hat article, I wanted to cite references to specific comics. I had to write them into the text because references aren't installed. If References do get installed, I'd like to also suggest a template for {{cite comic}} to create a quick and easy uniform reference to comics by number (or perhaps by name at the user's option?) TheHYPO (talk) 15:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a link for the References plugin? I searched quickly on MediaWiki's site and didn't see anything. --Jeff (talk) 16:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

It defaults (I believe) to citing in a 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 style; there's SOMETHING That lets you change it to the more familiar wikipedia 'a' 'b' 'c' style, which is easier to read, imo. TheHYPO (talk) 19:15, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Mainpage category issues

Waldir already did some repairs to the {{comic}} template to keep it from sorting the Main Page into categories when the template is transcluded on the main page, but I see that other manual categorizations are still being transcluded (eg: the main page is currently categorized into category:Comics featuring Cueball. Is there a way to include the article without including its categories at all? TheHYPO (talk) 21:33, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to be related to the {{comic}} template. Apparently the categories added manually to the comic page are getting to the main page. We can, for now, wrap them in noinclude tags. Maybe later we should create a {{category}} template that does that automatically. --Waldir (talk) 23:40, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I noted in that you'd already fixed the comic template. As I said, these were the "other manual categorizations". Noinclude would work, I suppose, but I do think we need to somehow fix that if the entire article is going to be included on the main page. TheHYPO (talk) 16:08, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Caching issues

I seem to be seeing some caching issues with images. I can't be sure if this will still be in effect by the time anyone reads this, but at the time of writing, File:United Shapes.png, for example, is still displaying as an older revision (even though it correctly states the filesize and resolution of the current version). Viewing the "full sized image" (http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/f/fc/United_Shapes.png) still displays that older revision, as well. However, if you add a question mark to the end of the full sized URL (http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/f/fc/United_Shapes.png?), the image is correctly purged and displays the correct image (although only with that URL, not on the file page nor where the image is transcluded). In other words, there's a caching issue.

I used to edit on some Wikia sites where they also had this issue, and it drove all the editors up the wall (particularly since it ended up affecting a good portion of images when updated, sometimes for as long as several hours). It was frankly quite frustrating when Wikia refused to do anything about that problem (part of the reason I don't edit there anymore). Is there any chance someone could look into this issue? I'm not sure what entirely causes it. OmegaTalk • Contribs 01:58, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Aaaaand the image is updated (so the above example won't work anymore). The images definitely seem to be updating, but it's rather slow: at least a few minutes... OmegaTalk • Contribs 02:00, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it might have to do with the Job queue. If that's the case, such updates will gradually happen as edits are made to other pages (each edit takes a job from the queue and runs it). But I'm not entirely sure that's what's at play here. --Waldir (talk) 03:28, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Related issue?

Don't know if this is related, but I'm noticing that thumbnails are displaying as red X's on alot of images - especially where I've noticed that editors have corrected the image title to lowercase in an article. One example is File:t-shirts and T-shirts - the thumbnails for the image history on the image page itself are Xs for me, as is the actualy comic on its comic page, which was at a reduced size. This isn't the only comic doing this. Hitler is as well, for example. TheHYPO (talk) 14:01, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Creating new comics

I'm a big fan of List of all comics which I think is a great page and resource. Problem is, at least for me, the "create" button isn't working like it should. It's not preloading the {{create}} template as a starting template. If someone has time to take a look at that issue, I think it's a great idea. Is there any way that the preload could also somehow be passed the comic number, image name and comic name so the user doesn't have to reenter those? We should look into this. TheHYPO (talk) 21:15, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Ditto. There are a few refinements that I think could be made, though.

It's huge, taking a lot of time to load (tables tend to do that, I suppose) so perhaps breaking it into groups, even if it's on the same page (that is, separate tables for each hundred or fraction thereof) Breaking each into sections would allow a TOC for rapid navigation, too.

While it might be innocuous, the (create) link isn't needed for anything that isn't redlinked, so maybe an #ifexist, for when the pages do get created, the create no longer appears.

short URLs

Hi, you should try to enable short URLs, which remove the ugly index.php from every URL. It makes navigation more intuitive and "wiki-style". It's actually quite easy to do: [1]

(Oh, and by the way, would you add WikiEditor? It's so beautiful :) [2])

Scaled Images

Some of the larger comics are being scaled down to 800px wide. But MediaWiki apparently wants a discrete image rather than scaling what's been uploaded. Is there a plan to fix this? I hope I posted to the right section lcarsos (talk) 21:39, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Can you provide an article as an example, because I'm not sure what you mean here. What I have noticed lately, and maybe this is the same thing you're talking about is that any scaled image is not displaying and I'm not sure what the error is.

Basically, anything that's been scaled down, whether automatically by the wiki software (usually on File pages), or by people putting in widths into the comic template on comic pages so the images aren't obnoxiously large.

Caching issue with pages

I'm noticing that aside from the image scaling issue (that I really hope someone is working on), I'm noticing that pages appear to be caching - I edited the latest article but my edits don't immediately show on the main page where that article is transcluded (as of this writing, I still see dead links on the mainpage to "Comics featuring Beret Guy" "Comics featuring Ponytail" because I forgot to add "Category:" to the wiki tag, even though I've already fixed the error in the article. TheHYPO (talk) 16:38, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

External Link

Spam template add noindex

Can the spam template be modified to also tag the pages as Category:Noindexed pages so that passing search engine robots don't think we're promoting those sites? I haven't leveled up enough in wiki-knowledge to be smart enough to do that on my own. lcarsos (talk) 21:38, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Apologies if this is already implemented, but just add <includeonly>__NOINDEX__</includeonly> to the template page. That's assuming the robots.txt for this website is set up to accept instructions from the wiki, of course. --PhilosopherLet us reason together. 07:55, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Change "Discussion" to "Talk"

It seems we've borrowed a number of templates and other settings that refer to "T" or "talk" for what is still called "Discussion" here. I suggest it is changed to "Talk" now, rather than change the references back to "D" and "discussion". Mark Hurd (talk) 11:44, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

New comic template:

this guy has indicated that he has "added some interesting features to my toolbar, including adding a page template as a button" - it would be great to Add the {{create}} template code as a quick clickable button to insert when creating a new page for new comics... Can anyone with admin access to the site code add such a button?? TheHYPO (talk) 20:49, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

xkcd icon

Can anyone see the icon next to xkcd.com links? I just see a blank space. --Waldir (talk) 15:19, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I cannot, and as far as I know, no one else can. I suspect that this is related to the image resizing bug that we are also dealing with. But, as no one is working on that, there will not be a fix for this either in the near (or indeed the foreseeable) future. lcarsos_a (talk) 15:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

We could simply remove it. I mean, was it that useful anyway? --Waldir (talk) 16:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it wasn't related to the image scaling problem. It turns out the direct link at MediaWiki:Common.css was outdated. I just fixed that :) --Waldir (talk) 03:13, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

We need more maintainers

I'm moving a thread that Davidy22 started on my talk page. The gist is, we need more people with server-side access (especially mediawiki-savvy ones) so we can properly deal with several issues that have been plaguing the wiki for a while now, most notably spam, but also the image scaling problem, a possible extension for proper comments, clean urls, etc. Below is the original thread, please comment. --Waldir (talk) 17:56, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Could you set the permissions so that all anon users have to pass a captcha to edit? The spam has gotten obscene, and they've stopped posting links, so our current detection mechanisms aren't working anymore. Davidy22(talk) 08:21, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I would love to have the ability to tweak the wiki more thoroughly, but currently Jeff's the only one with server access. To be honest, I am not terribly familiar with server-side mediawiki management, so I haven't asked Jeff for access, but it's clear we can't be dependent on a single person to do all the mediawiki config (and Jeff probably knows even less about mediawiki than I do). Are you by any chance acquainted with server-side mediawiki maintenance? I think we could present a good case for having someone else with access to a dev/prototype instance of this wiki on Jeff's server so we could at least experiment and tell him exactly what needs to be done. Thoughts? --Waldir (talk) 17:40, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we need more people that are empowered to actively fight spam. I think that we ought to promote Davidy22 to administrator also, so that he can delete pages and block spammers/vandals as he notices them rather than letting them pile up until yourself, IronyChef, or myself notice that there's work that needs done.

What I think we should do is break out rights into more groups than simply administrator and bureaucrat. I think that's too big of a jump, and that there should be some gradiation. I think we should add a moderator (mark pages as patrolled and rollback ability (as much as it's a sledgehammer when you really only need a ball-peen hammer)) position.

I think we also need a spam fighter position, but that might not be possible to implement. It should be a position that allows the person to delete pages with 1 or 2 edits (page creation, marked as spam, maybe as high as 3 or 4 for the bots that repeat edit certain pages) and block users with 1 or 2 edits. The real problem there is how to grant those super-powerful abilities without allowing them to lose their mind and go crazy and destroy the wiki. Of course, if we don't catch it early enough there's going to be those IPs that manage to get to six edits, and those will have to be squashed by a full admin. We will also need a way of tagging those spam accounts so when a full admin passes by they will also know to ban the IP address after a spam fighter has deleted all the pages it created.

Finally, we also need a more active bureaucrat so that we don't have to bug Jeff to promote admin's as well as future moderators and/or spam fighters, and recognize bot accounts as bot accounts. We also should find someone knowledgeable to help Jeff (and maybe he has little helpers) to maintain the actual server. I've done some PHP work, but I've never touched anything deep inside a wiki (I like Ruby and Rails much more). This is my first time gaining admin status on a wiki, so I have no idea what the extra dials and levers do/mean. I look up on the MediaWiki manual and Wikipedia help pages things that I think should be possible, and often times pages exist in places about doing these things, but I'm nowhere near being called knowledgeable. After I finish up some IRL work I'm currently tied up in, I intend to set up a VM webserver on my computers and run a mediawiki install so I can learn how to work (and not break) things without putting explain xkcd in jeopardy.

From what I know, a moderator user group is possible, but not the spam fighter one. Then again, too many hierarchical levels may be too much for such a small body of regulars. Implementing the moderator group is easy, mw:Manual:User rights has the details (the "ninja" example and the "list of permissions" section should be enough for putting together the configuration commands to be added to the wiki's LocalSettings.php).

As for bureaucrats, I think it makes sense but it seems to me that Jeff only takes longer to perform changes that affect the server, as they understandably may take longer or be more complex (or break the wiki!). Bureaucrats' only difference from admins is that they can promote/demote other users, and this Jeff has been doing without delay, so perhaps there isn't a need for more bureaucrats at the moment. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

We do need more sysadmins (people with access to the server), though, for sure. This is a little tricky as none of us is comfortable enough to confidently make server changes in a mediawiki install. Jeff, how about putting the wiki in source control and giving two or three people access to it, so that any wrongdoings can be easily reverted? You could setup a git repository in the server and we could fork it locally to our machines, make tests and push the commits to the server repo whenever they're ready. --Waldir (talk) 17:20, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

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